


The Festive Spirit

by Shachaai



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Christmas nonsense, Multi, and by nonsense I mean the zombie apocalypse, background ships and implied ships are there for the squinting at, but this is mostly just strangers slowly becoming friends, discussing whether to set the brandy on fire or not is perfectly seasonal, in the middle of the end of the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 20:02:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19730791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shachaai/pseuds/Shachaai
Summary: A quiet moment on a cold December night with friends, terrible alcohol, and zombies outside.It’s been two and a bit weeks since the outbreak, and the night is still full of groaning.





	The Festive Spirit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [losthitsu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/losthitsu/gifts).



> Crossposted from my tumblr.
> 
> This one is Hitsu’s fault. We were discussing my lack of zombie content at Halloween, and somehow or other I threatened to write a zombie Christmas fic. Here is that threat fulfilled. ~~Forgive and forget? No. Remember and write.~~  
>  Most of the warnings you’d expect for a fic about a zombie apocalypse, but there’s no on-screen violence and nobody dies. I mean, obviously a bunch of people have died since there are zombies, but not a named character.
> 
> Wil = f!Netherlands, Julia = f!Prussia, Isabel = f!Spain, Elaine = f!England, and David = Wales

It’s been two and a bit weeks since the outbreak, and the night is still full of groaning. Wil is careful to only move the curtain slightly and slowly when she looks out of the window to the French street two floors below, her lips curling at the sight of the _thing_ shuffling down the middle of the road, its shadow grotesquely long-limbed in the light of the half-moon.

Despite the fact it’s missing one arm and half its entrails have fallen out of its belly, intestines dragging in the frost-lined dirt behind it as it staggers along.

_Zombie._

“‘Nother one?” Julia asks, not bothering to look up from where she’s nodding off pressed up against Wil’s side. Her German accent has grown thicker with her tiredness, but the older woman had been unable to fall asleep with the other three members of their group when she’d tried (whether because of nightmares, or the fact one of the still-sleeping trio snores loudly enough he’s an actual risk to their lives if he falls asleep somewhere inadequately soundproofed from zombies), and volunteered to squish up against Wil to keep them both warm whilst Wil took the watch shift.

“Just one,” Wil confirms, before adding, more cautious now than she has ever been: “That I can see.”

Sound carries well on cloudless nights in the cold, but the night is full of too much groaning for there just to be _one_ zombie nearby outside. It’s an awful enough sound Wil actually _misses_ the terrible Christmas music that had just begun to be playing everywhere before the outbreak had begun. Baby, it’s cold outside.

Julia shifts her position slightly, and the long lump of her hair in its braid digs uncomfortably into Wil’s arm. (Sure, Julia might be stopping Wil from freezing to death in the December night now the electricity’s stopped running, but she’s hardly a _comfortable_ companion.) “You think they’ll ever stop?”

“Can’t stop _death._ ” Wil was never the best conversationalist in her family, and this topic hardly draws the words from her now. Wil had always been the _practical_ one, the pragmatic eldest sibling - but it is so, so tiring being practical all the time, running from death and clinging to survival every day. “They might starve enough they’re too weak to move.”

“How long does it take for the human body to starve?”

“Fucked if I know,” says Wil, and looks away from the window to jerk her chin in the direction of their sleeping companions. “Ask the doctor.”

Along with Wil and Julia, there are three other people holed up in the small locked and barricaded room that their group have called shelter for the night, all adults: Isabel, a restaurant owner and expatriate from Spain; David, an agronomist from the UK, and David’s younger sister, Elaine, a paediatrician. With only one thin blanket between them, the trio have squashed themselves together in their sleep like a basketful of heat-seeking kittens, all three of them acquaintances of each other from before the outbreak. They’d been at the wedding dinner rehearsal of David and Elaine’s eldest brother and Isabel’s best friend when zombies had broken in and they’d been forced to flee: David had still had half his groomsman outfit on when they’d met Wil and Julia some days later, and Isabel, unable to find other, more survival-friendly shoewear in her size, a pained grimace and her bridesmaid’s heels.

Mostly, before this _shit,_ the five of them had been strangers. Now, they’re all they all have, save for the zombies outside and the dread that lives like rocks in their bellies.

(“Do you remember when I told you Iain and Marianne getting married wasn’t going to be the end of the world?” David had asked his sister later that night, after the groups of two and three had become a single group of five and there’d been enough quiet for Elaine to bring out her medical training and treat Isabel’s blistered soles, David’s cut hand, and a long bleeding slash along Wil’s thigh.

Elaine’s laugh had been a hollow bark that Wil recognised from Julia and hearing herself.)

Julia isn’t one for sighing, not even when drowsy, clicking her tongue instead and rousing herself to start rummaging in the backpack that she’d brought over to the window with her.

Wil already knows what the German is going for before she sees its glass glinting in the light of the moon - a bottle of cheap _kirsch._ They’d found the brandy along with a few other bottles of alcohol in one of the cupboards downstairs when they’d broken into the house they’re currently staying in earlier that afternoon, and the booze had been divvied up like their food supplies amongst their bags to share the weight.

Two medium-size bottles of vodka and one flask-sized bottle of whiskey had been claimed by Elaine for the treatment of - likely - future wounds and pain-relief, but the _kirsch_ had looked dubious enough the doctor had set it aside for them to either drink or use to start a fire. A half-empty bottle of strawberry liqueur had given Julia, Isabel, David and Elaine something to warm their insides before they fell asleep, whilst Wil still has the dregs of the bottle - if she wants them - for when it is her turn to rest for the night.

Julia offers her the still-sealed bottle of _kirsch,_ the wry twist about her mouth too deeply-shadowed in the shitshow that has become of life right now, in the dark of the room. “A toast to hoping the bastards starve soon?”

Wil eyes her, voice flat when she asks: “You want to get the person on watch drunk?”

“Just a mouthful,” says Julia, and shakes the _kirsch_ at Wil. The bottle sloshes, the liquid inside of it looking even more dubious in the night than it had when they’d all poked it that afternoon. “C’mon, you can have _one mouthful._ It’s Christmas.”

“Not for another two weeks and a half.” A full month on from the outbreak.

If they make it that far.

“You’ve managed to keep count?” Wil can’t tell if Julia sounds scathing, impressed, or just plain surprised. “I lost track of the days days ago.”

“Yesterday was the 5th,” Wil says quietly, his heart squeezed tightly in her ribcage. “ _Sinterklaasavond._ ”

“Shit, really?” Julia’s tone has gone quiet as well, something Wil has learnt in the past few weeks that is rare for the other woman. Julia’s noise and rough edges are her defensive shield, and who is _Wil_ to criticise her for that? “I usually give my sister chocolate.”

“My brother and sister also. Chocolate shaped like the initials of their names, marzipan and oranges.”

All of them in their group have lost family - though only to uncertainty of their fates, so far, rather than absolute death. Julia had become separated from her younger sister at the end of the first day of the outbreak, their grandfather in Germany, and Wil’s brother and sister had been back home in the Netherlands, many miles away, when the phonelines had went down. Isabel has a sister in Spain.

David and Elaine have it both better and worse than the rest of them. Though they both have each other, their mother, four siblings and one sibling-to-be are all still missing.

Wil takes another look out of the window - the zombie has moved on now, and the street appears clear - before accepting the _kirsch_ from Julia, unscrewing its cap and taking a long despairing swallow.

It _burns_ on the way down, the taste of bitter-sour cherries clogging up Wil’s throat, and she grimaces. “I wouldn’t have used this stuff to clear my drains.”

“That bad?” Julia grabs the bottle from her, taking a swig of her own. Which she promptly regrets by the looks of it, her eyes widening and voice croaking a scandalised: “ _Herr_ Gott.”

Something in the expletive manages to make its way past David’s snores, Isabel stirring from her position at Elaine’s back and pushing herself up rather blearily onto her elbows to peer over at Wil and Julia by the window.

_“¿Pasa algo?”_

“Just can’t sleep,” Julia explains, still croaky around the edges and flapping her hands like it will help the brandy settle any better in her stomach. “You should still rest while you can.”

 _“Mm,_ ” Isabel confirms, but, instead of laying down again, slowly picks her way up to her feet, stepping her way over Elaine’s and David’s legs beside her to make her way over to the window.

Even in the middle of the apocalypse, when none of them have done more than wash their hands and faces for days and they share a comb between them for their hair, Wil can admit the Spanish woman has a careless sensuality, Isabel’s movements long and lazy. Sleep has made her gaze heavy-lidded, left strands of her curling brown hair stuck to her face, and there is a long smudge of dirt on Isabel’s cheek.

She’s uncomfortably attractive, and warm from sleep when she folds herself up on Wil’s other side, laying her head half on Wil’s arm and half on Wil’s chest so she can look over Wil to Julia and her inquisitive look on Wil’s other side.

“It feels like their pointy elbows quadruple when they sleep,” Isabel confides drowsily to Julia and Wil’s right breast. (Something Wil agrees with, because she’s curled up with Elaine a few times and ended up choking on the paediatrician’s long blonde hair and/or with a elbow in her kidney _every time._ Julia’s just as bad.) “You are drinking the _kirsch?_ ”

“It’s terrible,” says Wil, and tries to shift so it doesn’t feel like Isabel and her heat are pinning her to the wall.

“Fucking terrible,” Julia agrees, and holds out the bottle to Isabel over Wil’s belly - who takes a swig of the stuff and then immediately starts coughing. “Told you.”

 _“Ai,_ ” Isabel’s eyes are watering, and Wil gets an arm free to take the _kirsch_ from her before she drops and smashes it on the floor, “it tastes like something my sister would use to clean her boat.”

“Yeah, well,” Julia doesn’t even bother taking the bottle from Wil, grabbing Wil’s hand between two of hers and lifting the neck of the bottle up to her mouth for another drink that way, “the good shit’s been claimed in the name of medi- _fuck,_ it doesn’t get better the second time around.”

Isabel stretches out her hand with grabby fingers, and Wil really has to wonder when she consented to be a doll for two women to push around for booze when Julia tips the bottle - still in Wil’s grasp - for Isabel to drink from. “So we are still drinking it because…?”

“Feast of Saint Nicholas,” says Julia, right as Isabel gets another mouthful of _kirsch_ and shudders her way through swallowing it. “Festive spirit is appropriate, _ja?_ ”

“I do not think _‘festive’_ is the best word for it.”

“No,” Wil agrees, and takes back her hand from the two women beside her - ignoring their wounded looks - to take another drink herself. Julia had been right - the second swallow is just as bad as the first, and the sickly taste of cherries sears even more strongly on Wil’s tongue. “But as long as we can taste this shit, we’re not dead.”

Both Julia and Isabel fall silent.

The world is silent, really, apart from their breathing, David’s snoring, and the distant groaning of zombies from outside.

Wil goes back to looking out of the window - the street is still clear outside -, and Isabel’s head finally settles itself vaguely on Wil’s shoulder.

Julia takes the _kirsch_ and screws it closed again, setting the bottle down beside Wil’s share of liqueur. “…You think zombies can die of liver disease?”


End file.
